Synopses & Reviews
Sigrid Nunez was an aspiring writer when she first me Susan Sontag, already a legendary figure known for her polemical essays, blinding intelligence, and edgy personal style. Sontag introduced Nunez to her son, the writer David Rieff, and the two began dating. Soon Nunez moved into the apartment that Rieff and Sontag shared. As Sontag told Nunez, "Who says we have to live like everyone else?"
Sontag's influence on Nunez, who went on to become a successful novelist, would be profound. Described by Nunez as "a natural mentor," who saw educating others as both a moral obligation and a source of endless pleasure, Sontag inevitably infected those around her with her many cultural and intellectual passions. In this poignant, intimate memoir, Nunez speaks of her gratitude for having had, as an early model, "someone who held such an exalted, unironic view of the writer's vocation." For Sontag, she writes, "there could be no nobler pursuit, no greater adventure, no more rewarding quest." Nunez gives a sharp sense of the charged, polarizing atmosphere that enveloped Sontag whenever she published a book, gave a lecture, or simply walked into a room. Published more than six years after Sontag's death, Sempre Susan is a startlingly truthful portrait of this outsized personality, who made being an intellectual a glamorous occupation.
Review
"This detailed, nuanced account of the more private side of a complex, contradictory public figure is told with even-handed good humor and more than a little compassion. Utterly absorbing." Meghan O'Grady Vogue
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The best thing written about Sontag. -- Edmund White
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"Sigrid Nunez's intimate portrayal of Susan Sontag will fascinate both ardent Sontag fans and those who have never read her work. This memoir is at once a window into the writing life in general, an examination of the complexities of one artist in particular, and a tribute to the lost intellectual New York City of the 1970s. Remarkably, it's as honest as it is affectionate and as sad as it is charming." Craig Seligman San Francisco Chronicle
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"Sempre Susan is written with quiet authority, flashes of poetry, and a steady accumulation of startling, precise details, some apocryphal (Sontag didn't know what a dragonfly was? drank blood as a child?), until by the end Sontag the Myth comes to life. What is amazing about this wonderful book is that by the end we know as much about Nunez as we do about Sontag, by the very focus of her attention, by her perception of the myth, by her compassionate interpretation." Curtis Sittenfeld
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"Sempre Susan is as epigrammatic, funny and brutal as its subject. Sontag fans, haters, and agnostics alike will find that it contains indispensable lessons, both explicit and subtle, about how and how not to write, and how and how not to live." Nick Flynn
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"The best thing written about Sontag."Lydia Davis
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"raceful, respectful and achingly honest." Edmund White
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"Sontag once wrote about feeling estranged from the "Susan Sontag" who stood on the spine of the books she had written. In Nunez's Sempre Susan, the gap between the writer and the person who wrote the books is made all the more vividly real--a reminder of the extraordinary transformative work that goes into writing in the first place." Meghan O'Rourke
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"...Nunez, an uncompromising talent in her own right (The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City), offers the most vibrant and multifaceted portrait of Sontag to date." Slate
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"Nunez has constructed a eulogy that mythologizes and humanizes one of the most intimidating figures of contemporary culture." Kirkus Reviews
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"Ms. Nunez's book is an elegy for a great woman and the company she kept, the vanished salon where she was the center." Alice Gregory The Boston Globe
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"'Looking back,' Nunez writes, 'I only wish that I could feel more joy--or, at least, that I could find a way of remembering that is not so painful.' For the reader, if not for herself, she has." James Camp The New York Observer
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"Two things you will not find in Sempre Susan, Sigrid Nunez's slim, elegant memoir of Susan Sontag in the 1970s:
– a predictable rehashing of the notorious writer's political gaffes and personal foibles -- her apparent insensitivity to the American victims of 9/11 and her refusal to talk openly about her sexual identity (she was gay) being two of the best-known, and
– dish about Nunez's two-year affair with Sontag's son, David Rieff, the book's ostensible raison d'etre."
Rachel Shteir, Tablet (Read the entire Tablet review)
Synopsis
A biographical portrait by the novelist who lived with Sontag's son for several years in the seventies and knew her well in her last years.
Synopsis
Sigrid Nunez was a young writer new to the New York literary world when she met Susan Sontag, already a legendary figure known for her polemical essays, her blindingly bright intelligence, and her edgy personal style. A magnetic presence, intimidating and blunt, Sontag established herself as the main interpreter of the avant-garde with Against Interpretation-the book, claims Nunez, that made her want to become a writer. Through her relationship with Sontag's son, the writer David Rieff, Nunez acquired an intimate sense of her subject. Her memoir, at once piercing and deeply empathic, gives a sharp sense of the charged, polarizing atmosphere that enveloped Sontag whenever she published a book, gave a lecture, or simply walked into a room. Published six years after the author's death, Sempre Susan is a startlingly truthful portrait of this outsized personality, who, through sheer force of will, made being an intellectual a glamorous occupation.
About the Author
Sigrid Nunez is the author of five novels. She has won two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rome Prize in Literature. She lives in New York City.